Hi all!

Just starting to mess around with some rigging in Houdini and I'm really starting to get into it now. Just wondering though if anyone has any suggestions on dealing with gimble lock in the shoulders. I know they are a troublesome area but I can't seem to find a way to adjust rotation orders on bones in Houdini, so I'm kinda stuck with what I am given and as soon as I put my character's arms forward, the gimble ends up in a bit of a naff position.
I was thinking I could parent the bone to a null and animate that but I'd prefer to keep everything as minimal as possible…

Thanks,
Pete

you can change the rotation order on a bone by adjusting the ‘rOrd’ parameter
bone = hou.node('/obj/bone1')
bone.parm(“rOrd”).set(“zyx”) (zyx, xyz, etc)

but it's not recommended - many tools in Houdini rely on the order being ‘zyx’

you could also use a null as a parent of the bone and adjust it's rot order.

if you want upload a file and we can have a look.

Can you just have the Bone LookAt the target Null and use another null as an UpVector?
Or maybe just check the SimpleMale/Female rigs included with Houdini?

Ahhh! I don't know why I hadn't thought to deconstruct those rigs
Looks like the FK bones are driven by Nulls that appear when FK is active, and also rigged at a lower angle (which is probably sensible really).
Thanks for that,
I should be able to get this working a lot better now.

Pete